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JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes fired missiles late Tuesday at an area west of the Syrian capital, striking an arms depot and injuring three soldiers, Syrian state media reported.

Israel, which rarely acknowledges its military strikes in Syria, did not immediately confirm the raid near Damascus. The military said Tuesday only that one of its aerial defense systems was activated “in response to an antiaircraft missile launched from Syria.”

Officials have repeatedly said that Israel will act in Syria to protect its interests and security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israel could expand its military actions to prevent the growing influence of Iran and its proxies in Syria, despite a surprise U.S. decision to withdraw all of its troops from the country.

“The decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria will not change our consistent policy,” Netanyahu said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting Sunday. “We will continue to act against Iran's attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, and to the extent necessary, we will even expand our actions there.”

President Trump's announcement a week ago that the United States would withdraw an estimated 2,000 troops surprised many in Israel, increasing concerns here that the absence of an American presence in the war-torn country would enhance Iran’s ability to challenge Israel on its northern border.

“The sense now in Israel is that Israel is essentially alone in the task of back-walling the Iranian military presence in Syria,” Ofer Zalzberg, a Jerusalem-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, said in an interview. “This decision feeds the notion that is prevalent in the region, even if it’s not entirely correct, that the U.S. is withdrawing. Many people draw delight from this, specifically in Tehran and Moscow.”

However, Israeli military chief Gadi Eizenkott said Sunday that while the White House’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria was a “significant event,” the Israeli military would continue to independently fight Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the targets hit on Tuesday night were weapons warehouses belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its allies, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.

For the past three weeks, Israel has been engaged in what it has dubbed “Operation Northern Shield” to detect and destroy cross-border tunnels it says have been dug by Hezbollah in recent years. So far, Israel has discovered four such tunnels snaking from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s home base, into Israeli territory.

While none of the tunnels so far exposed had openings on the Israeli side, they were detected through seismic sensors and ground-penetrating radar, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, told journalists.

Last week, Israel and the United States called for an emergency meeting in the United Nations Security Council to discuss the tunnels and their violation of Israeli sovereignty. Ahead of the meeting, Netanyahu said it was time for the international community to hold Lebanon, Iran and Hezbollah accountable.

“Lebanon is doing nothing at best, colluding at worst,” Netanyahu said in a rare briefing for international reporters in Jerusalem. “My message is, Hezbollah is putting you in great jeopardy.”

Israel, which battled Hezbollah in a punishing war in 2006, has repeatedly warned that any future fight with the militant group will also encompass Lebanese government targets.

Israel sees a strengthening arc of Iranian influence — from Lebanon, through its proxy Hezbollah, across Syria to Tehran — as a threat to its security, and it has pointed to the tunnels as evidence of its enemies’ nefarious aims.

The Russian Defence Ministry has stated that none of the passenger planes that were under threat due to an Israeli airstrike on Syria were related to Russian air carriers.

Six Israeli F-16 fighter jets posed a direct threat to two civil planes during a recent airstrike on Syria, Gen. Maj. Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry, said on Wednesday.

"Provocative actions of the Israeli Air Force on the evening of December 25, when six F-16 aircraft launched an airstrike on the territory of Syria from the airspace of neighboring Lebanon, created a direct threat to two passenger aircraft," the spokesman said.

According to Konashenkov, the attack was being launched at the time when the two civil aircraft were landing at the airports of Beirut and Damascus. He specified that the two passenger planes did not belong to Russian carriers.

Earlier, the Syrian SANA news agency reported that the Israeli Air Force conducted last night an unprecedented 1.5-hour long attack on Syria, with the majority of the Israeli missiles being intercepted by the Syrian air defences.

Earlier in December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue Israeli operations in Syria to counter Iran's military presence in the country, following the US' decision to withdraw from the Arab Republic.

"The decision to withdraw 2,000 US troops from Syria will not change our consistent policy. We will continue to act against Iran's attempts to gain a military foothold there and, if necessary, even expand our operations," Netanyahu said during a cabinet meeting.

Iran has repeatedly stated that its forces maintain an exclusively advisory role in Syria, and denies any plans to establish a permanent military presence in the country.

The strikes appeared to be the first Israeli raids in Syria since the US announced the withdrawal of 2,000 troops from the country, a force which had in part been charged with keeping Iranian-backed fighters in check.

Israel is concerned over whether, without a US presence in the country, its main enemy Iran will have a freer hand to operate in Syria and whether Russia will respond to Israel's calls to limit it.

Israel has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of air strikes in Syria against what it says are Iranian military targets and advanced weapons deliveries to Hezbollah.

But Israeli raids in the country dropped significantly following a friendly fire incident in September which saw a Russian fighter jet shot down by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli strike on Latakia, killing all 15 servicemen aboard.

Russia, blaming Israel for the incident, agreed to supply Syria with its advanced S-300 air defense system which Damascus had said would make Israel "think carefully" before carrying out further air raids.

The system is not yet believed to be operational, however, with Syrian operators still being trained on its use.

Israel has long warned that Iran was seeking to use its intervention in Syria to consolidate a permanent military presence on its northern borders and to form a contiguous "land bridge" across to the Mediterranean controlled by its various proxies.

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